The Neuroscience of Flourishing: Four Practices for Turning Stress and Anxiety Into Clarity and Calm | Richard Davidson and Cortland Dahl

This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey, hey, how are we doing? So today we're going to talk about some quick and simple practices from neuroscience and Buddhism designed to rewire your brain, change your genes. transform the annoying little tasks you have to do every day and boost your overall okayness quotient.

I've got two guests today. My guests are Richard Davidson, PhD. Everybody calls him Richie. In my view, Richie is truly a historic figure. He's the neuroscientist who pioneered the research into what meditation does to your brain.

He's a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he also founded an incredible center called the Center for Healthy Minds. Richie has a new book called Born to Flourish, which he co-authored with my other guest today, Cortland Dahl, PhD, who is a scientist, author, translator, and meditation teacher. In this conversation, we talk about what it really means to flourish, how difficult emotions such as anxiety, fear, or grief can actually coexist with well-being, why flourishing is a trainable set of skills, not a personality trait or a self-improvement project. We get an introduction to the Healthy Minds framework and its four pillars, awareness, connection, insight, and purpose. We talk about

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